Turkey's Syria offensive shows how each party is fighting its own war

End to war now seems further away than ever as the Kurds, US and Turkey each have goals that are rarely compatible

In the Pentagon’s fight against Islamic State, the Kurds had always been a good fit. In northern Iraq they were both trusted ally and known quantity. On the battlefields of Syria they were seen as better trained, more able and more motivated than any other group, including the Arab militias that the US had supported elsewhere in the war.

There remained one big problem, though: Turkey. With a deep and unresolved enmity towards the very groups the US had chosen as allies in Syria, the arrangement was always likely to rupture. Last week, it did just that.